The main research problem of this article is whether the political message, that was addressed to voters in the presidential election from 2015, was based on the results of the evaluations or of the socio-economic researches were conducted by the research centers. The political views and slogans, which were presented by the candidates for the President of Poland during the campaign in 2015, were analyzed to answer the main research problem. The theoretical framework of the evaluation and the process of evaluation researches on the example of the managing authority of the operational program were described in the first part of this article. The European experience of utilization the evaluation results by the political class and the analysis of the presidential campaign from 2015 in reference of constructing political arguments with the results of the evaluation were presented in the second part. The author concludes that the results of the evaluation were marginally used during the campaign. The political arguments, that were used by candidates for the President of Poland, were mostly limited to recall simple figures, expert and public opinion, although in some cases the politics referenced to the results of the studies and reports. However, it is impossible to conclude if one of these studies was an evaluation research.
The aim of the article is a critical analysis of the electoral system of a single transferable vote on the example of local elections in Ireland and its evaluation from the point of view of key participants: voters, political parties and new players – immigrant candidates. The organization of elections, the vote counting methods and the rule of transfer of votes to seats as well as the influence of the electoral system on political parties strategies and voter behavior are presented in detail. In principle, the proportional system should be more friendly to independent candidates and small interest groups, but the case of immigrant candidates running in the elections in Ireland shows that in practice it is difficult for new players to achieve election success without the support of political parties. The analysis is based on a diverse sources, the review of academic literature and statistical data is complemented by the results of qualitative research – the in-depth interviews with Polish candidates running in the local elections in Ireland in the years 2009–2019.
The aim of the article is a critical analysis of the electoral system of a single transferable vote on the example of local elections in Ireland and its evaluation from the point of view of key participants: voters, political parties and new players – immigrant candidates. The organization of elections, the vote counting methods and the rule of transfer of votes to seats as well as the influence of the electoral system on political parties strategies and voter behavior are presented in detail. In principle, the proportional system should be more friendly to independent candidates and small interest groups, but the case of immigrant candidates running in the elections in Ireland shows that in practice it is difficult for new players to achieve election success without the support of political parties. The analysis is based on a diverse sources, the review of academic literature and statistical data is complemented by the results of qualitative research – the in-depth interviews with Polish candidates running in the local elections in Ireland in the years 2009–2019.
Publikacja współfinansowana przez Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach ; The presented book explores the influence of TV political advertising on political images of candidates competing in the 2015 presidential election in Poland. The primary aim of analysis is to verify if campaign spots affect the perception of political images of candidates and emotional attitude towards them. For this purpose, the empirical research (N=507) to check the reactions to campaign spots among voters was carried out. The presented study was proceeded according to the quasi-experimental research design between 4th and 8th of May 2015 (one week before the first round of the 2015 presidential election in Poland). The study sample included students of international security, internal security, European diplomacy, journalism and social communication, European studies, foreign language studies, physiotherapy, medicine, political studies and sociology from six universities: University of Warsaw, University of Wrocław, University of Silesia in Katowice, University of Economics in Katowice, Medical University of Silesia and Silesian University of Technology. The study involved three stages. First, the group of participants anonymously filled in a study questionnaire (pretest), including questions concerning their interest in politics, political preferences, ideological self-identifi cations, level of political alienation, evaluation of political images of the candidates competing for the office of the head of state and emotional attitudes to them. The instruments used in the study were feeling thermometers and semantic differential scales. Afterwards, the participants were shown randomly chosen campaign spots of each running candidate (in each group, the order of the candidates was also chosen randomly), acting as a stimulus that could potentially change the reactions to the analyzed politicians. After watching the ads of each candidate, the third stage of the study followed, in which the participants filled in a posttest referring to the political image characteristics and their emotional attitudes to the candidate.
The COVID-19 pandemic that has affected the world in 2020 and 2021 has had, is having and will have an impact on most areas of human life. This is a direct impact – such as health or economic consequences, as well as indirect – reevaluation of social relations, systems of values and culture norms. Since the fight against pandemic is in most regularly functioning countries a matter of public policy, this pandemic has a very serious impact also on the sphere of politics in general. This article aims to analyze what impact this pandemic had on the political situation in the United States in 2020. The year 2020 was a presidential election year in the United States, an election for which a significant part of the international community was waiting for mostly because of the clarity and diversity of the candidates. The aim of this paper is to answer the question to what extent the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the course of the campaign and especially the rhetoric and behavior of the candidates. It will also consider the impact going in the other direction, i.e. how and if at all, the fact that in 2020 we were dealing with the election period influenced the actions taken by the authorities at different levels in the fight against the pandemic. One of the main conclusions of the analysis is that the pandemic, given both the context of this particular election, the specific polarization of American society, and the opinions of individual electorates on important values, put Donald Trump in a particularly uncomfortable position and knocked out of his hands many of the advantages that had contributed to his victory four years earlier. The specific constellation of analyzed factors meant that, in the opinion of the author of the article, Donald Trump could not emerge victorious from this situation unlike many other leaders of countries whose ratings and evaluation in the reality of the fight against the pandemic were growing and improving. ; Pandemia COVID-19, która dotknęła świat w 2020 i 2021 r., miała, ...
The vast literature on European political parties is dominated by works focused on analyzing activities of the highest branches of state governments. Yet, it is difficult to be surprised by this state of affairs — in Europe, central authorities remain as the main political decision-makers, both in terms of internal affairs and foreign policies. However, it does not change the fact that political parties active in and submitting electoral candidates throughout any given country are not the only entities influencing the quality of political decisions made. It is particularly the case in federation countries and the so-called regional states, where regional parties, as well as their particular variety — ethno-regional parties — gain increasing political significance. The intensification of research on the position of regional parties in political systems of individual European states, especially on the subject of their presence in representative organs on four levels — European, state, regional, and local — is definitely justified. The first argument in favor of such research is the fact that in contemporary Europe, these groupings play a major role in establishing regional imagined communities. As a consequence, scientists must attempt to redefine the existing relations between the core and the periphery. The second argument is the fact that in Western European countries, the relevance level of regional parties is rather high, which indicates that the field of operations for such parties is still widening. Thirdly, regional parties are indeed a political occurrence characteristic for "old Europe" states, but they can also be found in Central and Eastern European countries. It means that conducting research on Western European regional parties conducted in Poland can be particularly significant. Poland is a rather unitary state and a change in the constitutional order, adopted in 1997, which establishes such a form of regime, is rather unlikely. It does not mean however, that the influence of Western European standards will not have an impact on political events in Poland and the shaping of the local political scene. An indepth analysis of solutions adopted in individual Western European states in terms of the capacity for representational participation of regional collectives in electoral representative organs on European, national, regional, and local levels can allow for drawing appropriate conclusions and a substantive evaluation of chances of and threats to democracy, which result from including political representatives of regional collective into lawmaking and — in a wider context — the workings of the political system. Fourthly, an analysis of the functioning of regional parties in the framework of European political systems can significantly contribute to the understanding of some factors conditioning the so-called "unfreezing process" of political systems. Finally, it should be noted that despite the existence of several classifications of political parties, the authors researching the matter today usually propose the adoption of a division into party "families", since the main "rivalry poles" are similar in most European states. The assumption of divisions based on doctrinal stereotypes is the reason many authors question the purposefulness of including regional and ethnic parties in classifications, which indicate the existence of ideological "families". It does not, however, change the fact that they comment on the matter of the existence of such groupings in their works, which is why we can assume that this is a consequential research issue. Contemporary Spain is undoubtedly one of the most interesting examples of a European state, where the political rivalry between the core and the periphery indicates the existence of a substantial sociopolitical division in this aspect. It is clear that any attempt to describe the functioning of its party system based solely on a classification formed using traditional doctrinal stereotypes must lead to an incomplete, heavily distorted image. The political processes in this country during the last 150 years show that the socio-political division between the core and the periphery is not any less vital in Spain than the divisions based on the attitudes towards economic and ideological issues. It is clear there that at the turn of the second decade of the 21st century, in the midst of a serious economic crisis, the disappointment in elite politics on the political core level resulted in the rise of popularity of regional parties. It should be noted here that the research on Spanish parties from this party "family" must be coupled with devoting particular attention to a subtype of groupings, which advocate ethnic values. This is due to the specificity of periphery regions, differing from other state areas in language, customs or tradition of political institutions, but also in using these differences in political play by ethno-regional parties. From the perspective of a highly centralized state such as Poland, it definitely merits to examine the case of Spain. The first argument in favor of researching this field is the fact that despite granting autonomic rights to all regions of Spain, the state still retains the form of a unitary state. This work is therefore an analysis of occurrences within the context of a similar form of state, as opposed to those happening in a federation — a form foreign to Polish tradition. Secondly, adding to Polish literature and therefore widening the knowledge of regional parties in Spain may be useful in future in the context of gradual maturing of Polish democracy on local and regional levels. The state decentralization, which occurred in Poland after 1989 was probably one of the most difficult political processes carried out in the country. It is suffice to note that in 1990, at the dawn of the Polish Third Republic, only one level of self-government — the municipal government — was established. Further solutions in the local government reform area were not implemented until 1998, when the government of Jerzy Buzek decided to create county and province levels. However, those solutions are becoming a frequent subject of political and scientific discussion. These discussions often include the notion that the local government reform is a process, which has not been finalized in Poland yet. It is worth noting here that the requests related to directions of changes in the field of Polish decentralization often come from local and regional entities. It can be therefore presumed that the process of development of sub-state political elites will result in subsequent requests in the future. This can further exacerbate the sociopolitical core-periphery division. Consequently, the main goal of this work is to verify the research hypothesis, which assumes that the significant sociopolitical core-periphery divisions in Spain must have prompted the political elites of the central level - which were active after the demise of general Franco and guided the democratic transformation process, setting the state's territorial integrity as a main goal — to employ solutions for the creation, activity and financing of political parties, as well as for electoral laws, which would allow for communities from individual historical regions to maintain a representation in representative organs on four levels — European, state, regional, and local — therefore ensuring their significant position in the political system of contemporary Spain.
